Co-implantation of oxygen vacancy and well-dispersed Cu cocatalyst into TiO2 nanoparticles for promoting solar-to-hydrogen evolution

Semiconductor photocatalysis serves a green technique to convert solar energy to sustainable hydrogen energy through water splitting. TiO 2 has attracting increasing interest and much effort has been paid on addressing the suffered drawbacks of solar energy utilization limitation and electron-hole recombination. In this work, simultaneously involving of oxygen vacancy and Cu into TiO 2 nanoparticles has been achieved through self-reduction of Cu 2 O and self-transformation of Ti-precursor from Cu 2 O@Ti-precursor in ethylene glycol-water medium. The Cu@TiO 2-x hybrids show improved photocatalytic H 2 production, and the Cu@TiO 2-x -1% sample has H 2 evolution rate of 7218.8 μmol g −1 h −1 , which is 2.1 times higher than that of TiO 2-x . It is proposed that the involving of metallic copper and oxygen vacancy by this solvothermal approach can enhance light absorption, promote electron-hole pairs separation and charge transfer, and increase active sites of TiO 2 nanoparticles, resulting in synergetic effect for hydrogen production improvement.